Elon Musk introduced the Tesla Powerwall and the larger Tesla Powerpack yesterday, suggesting that it's possible to power the world using batteries. But is there enough Lithium for the 2 billion Powerpacks that are needed to do this?

Musk actually didn't say that Tesla is using Lithium for the Powerpack, but it's a safe assumption. If Tesla would have invented anything better, they would have told.

Literature says that a battery has about 0.3g of Lithium per Ah. The 100 kWh Powerpack has 27'777 Ah (a Lithium-ion cell has 3.6V). With 0.3g/Ah this is 8.3kg of Lithium per Powerpack. That's 16.7 million tons of Lithium for 2 billion Powerpacks.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the world's reserve on Lithium to be about 13.5 million tons.

To answer Elon Musk's question "Is this within the abilities of humanity to do?": No, it's not. ﻿

+Maoh Lynx​ Yes, and for the third time now I'll state clearly, that is POLITICAL it has nothing to with the technology. The regulator process is so ludicrously beurocratic no one will spend the money on it. To even get permits for test reactors of a new design are virtually impossible and the old reactor designs are obsolete.

I think Russia is the only country building test Thorium reactors, and that's still like 10-20 years away.﻿